To
celebrate their tenth anniversary, Dutch progressive internet site: Progwereld
(http://www.progwereld.org) released an
album with the finest Dutch progressive rock bands, but not just songs from regular
albums put together. No. There is something special about this release since all
the songs have the lyrics sung in our native language.

While
mostly in progressive rock, the language of choice is English, Spanish, French
and even German, there was not a band that dared to release a song completely
sung in Dutch. So, what does the Dutch language add to the songs? The only
thing I can come up with is that the lyrics are easier to comprehend by people
that find the foreign languages hard to understand. Further in my opinion-and
yes I am Dutch as well-is that my native language is not the most suitable for
progressive rock.

But, stop nagging! The effort of the bands on Prog NL
is quite impressive, but in some ways the language gives the bands some
similarities with bands like Bløf or
Van Dik Hout.
Leap Day's Half Mens, Half Machine
(Half Man, Half Machine), KnightArea's Rijk Der
Schaduwen (Realm Of Shadows) and
Bruut Pitt's Twijfel (Doubt)
are samples of this phenomena, but musically these bands are more impressive
than the bands I referred to above. Being a fairly small country, even in The
Netherlands we have a large number of dialects,
21 Eyes OfRuby's
Vleugellam
(Winged) takes you to the south of our country, while
Flamborough Head sings their contribution:
Rixt Fan't Oerd completely in a language of
their own, namely Fries, which is not to be compared to the Dutch spoken in
other parts of The Netherlands. PBII
transfers their Plastic Soup into
Haagse Soep
(Plastic Soup), which I hope is meant as a kind of
humoristic statement, for I really don't like the local language of The Hague,
but nevertheless, the song is still a perfect statement, with brilliant guitar
work. Impressive on the CD are the Spanish band
Harvest, who's female vocalist is Dutch; a nice piano continues
during De Stille Zwerver (Silent
Tramp) , emotional vocals sing over that and a soft guitar solo takes the song
to an end. Another perfect song is Tijdlijn
(Timeline) by Nice Beaver which is
larded with newsflashes over a powerful guitar, bass and drums. The song that
incorporates the Dutch language the best for me is;
The Aurora Project with Alles Is Een
(Everything
Is One) as here is seems that everything is in balance: music, lyrics and atmosphere.
Everything is one, so to speak-even the translation of the title is right.

I would like to congratulate Progwereld for ten years of serving us nice
articles and album reviews. The CD is a perfect way to honour this fact and all
the bands that participated have done an excellent job. Let's find out if there
are bands that will be inspired and will start with lyrics in Dutch. The
samples on the album tell me that it should be possible so time will tell. By
the way. The album is still on sale on the Progwereld website. So take a
chance!